The film is directed by Walter Back, the director of Alvin and the Chipmunks 4: Lost on Journey, and is adapted from the best-selling children's book of the same name, Clifford the Big Red Dog. It tells the story of a little girl named Emily Elizabeth (played by Darby Camp) in New York who gets a puppy. This red dog named Clifford is cute and well-behaved, and becomes her good friend who is lonely and unsociable at school. But the dog gradually grows into a giant and is spotted by a biogenetic company. Emily and her uncle Casy (Jack Whitehall) must take it to escape the pursuit of greedy people.